


temper

by meritmut



Series: sifki au verse [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Prompt Fic, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 09:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "angry/first time, bonus if water is involved."</p><p>Sif and Loki are both young; she is discovering the cost of the war she glorifies and he is discovering...well, feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. anger

She comes to him barefoot, slipping in from the terrace to catch him unawares. She's the only person who ever could (well, not counting Amora, and no one really does seem to count Amora anymore) but tonight is not a normal night.

Her thoughts are scattered, discordant, and although she managed to cross the entire length of the citadel without being detected, Loki wonders if she even looked around her as she snuck onto the terrace outside.

If she had been paying attention, he knows, she'd have noticed the rain. The thunderous downpour is her slip-up, and it costs her a point on the eternal scoreboard that hangs between the two of them.

"You're dripping," he remarks blandly when she's no more than a few paces from him. She had hidden, waited in his dayroom for him to emerge, but by then he had already noticed the wet footprints glimmering in the candlelight over the pale marble floor, and realised that he was no longer alone.

He turns to her, takes in her crooked eyebrow and her disgusted smile.

"I am not."

Smirking, he gestures. "Your hair. Soaking."

"Oh." A faint flush colours her cheeks and she steps back from him. Mischief flickers in her smoky eyes. "I am quite wet," she admits, noting with poorly-disguised amusement the effect her words have on him.

"Did you not notice the rain?" he asks lightly, hoping her visit is a pacific one. He's had enough of her temper in the past few hours, rearing its unsightly head at the latest of Loki's minor transgressions. Sif has no right acting so angrily: it's not as if he'd freed _her_ horse specifically. He'd set the whole royal stables loose in the hunting forest for a laugh, after weeks of tedium at court. Even Thor had thought it a good jape once he'd returned his own mount to its stall.

Harmless fun, really. No one was killed, only one of the warriors was maimed (and how long do three broken toes take to heal?), and Sif got her horse back unscathed.

At least, he assumes that's what she's spent the past day fuming about. He never can tell. Now, at least, she seems conciliatory.

"I'm sorry I called you a whoreson," she begins, "Thor's right. It ill-befit the both of us."

He can't resist a little jibe. "You are forgiven, my lady."

Sif's nostrils flare delicately. "Don't test me, Loki. I came to make amends - I don't want to fight, can't you see that?"

He knows he should stop, accept her apology and let all be as it was, but she lays opportunity upon opportunity for a barbed comment at her expense.

"Truly? That must be a first, I think, for you."

"I  _mean_ it," she snaps, apologetic demeanour abandoned.

Loki has to laugh a little, delighting in her frustration. "I think not, dear Sif. I see confrontation even now in your eyes."

"I said enough!" Her fingers curl around his collar and jolt him sharply, pulling Loki close to her. Her eyes glow venomously, hard and hawklike in the flickering shadows of his dayroom. There is ire there, and something else Loki finds it a touch more difficult to name.

"Enough," hoarse and strained, her voice heats the very marrow of his bones as she leans in and breathes his name across his curving lips. There is sorcery in her sweet whispers, that they transform between her lungs and his to urgent and glittering hooks and sink deliciously upon his flesh, drag him down - down to crush her with a fierce and furious kiss.

* * *

There was a time before this, when the rains came with the turn of the year and flooded the city, and it is a time all of Asgard remembers well. The court recalls the mass removal of the grand tapestries from the lower halls, the bailing out of the cellars with tubs and buckets as even the queen muddied her skirts to bring the horses in from the inundated stables. They recall Thor and Balder tirelessly helping to restore order and to repair the city for weeks afterwards.

They do not recall Loki's presence until the deluge finally stopped, after six-and-forty nights. They do not recall it, because he was not there to recall.

If Asgard remembers that month as a time of chaos and struggling unity, the younger prince remembers it as a time he would dearly wish to revisit.

It isn't as if he'd  _intended_ to disappear during a crisis. He's fairly certain it hadn't been Sif's intention either. But he sees her soaked to the skin now and he remembers the last time she'd looked this way, and any question of intention dissipates in the face of events as they actually occurred.

Unusually for the two of them, he seeks her out - and he hasn't had to search very far in the end, for it has only been raining for a week or so and she isn't about to disturb her training patterns for some bad weather. Loki finds her just heading back into the otherwise empty barracks, and catches her on the steps of the cloistered courtyard.

She pauses in surprise, flicking sodden hair out of her eyes as she appraises him. "Well met, my prince."

Frowning at her formality, he steps aside to let her pass and watches as she strides indoors, unbuckling her quiver as she walks. Her vambraces and tough leather jerkin she slings over ropes suspended above the central hearth to dry, leaving her in thin leggings and a damp green tunic. Sensing him there by the archway she turns back, looking concerned.

"Is something amiss?"

Loki folds his arms, cocks his head curiously. "Must there be, for me to see you now? May I not visit a friend in her haunts, as she does mine?"

Sif sighs and smiles ruefully. "Of course. I'm sorry, I'm just a little out of sorts and you were looking so serious."

"Aye, at your sour face," points out Loki. "What troubles you, Sif?"

"I do  _not_  have a sour face," she complains as she wrings out her long hair over the hearth, rainwater hissing and spitting in the low flames.

"You rather did, I'm afraid. Sour as old milk." He grins at her to take the sting from his words, but she's having none of it.  _Out of sorts_  apparently translates to Sif having lost her sense of humour completely.

"So you came down to make mock of me?"

"I came down because I have not seen you since you rode off with my brother and the fair fool Fandral. Who, for all his alliterative potential when it comes to insults, shows scarce promise elsewhere as a living, breathing entity."

That makes her smile, if only to hear him speaking in his customary manner towards their friends. She knows that for all the cruelty of his tongue sometimes, Asgard would be a far duller place were he to blunt that blade with manners.

"You're on sparkling form," she observes dryly. "Are you quite sure I'm the sour one?"

Loki rolls his eyes. "Truths pleasant or otherwise are not my forte, Sif, but I am not blind. Now tell me, what troubles you?"

Thunder booms explosively above and both glance at the roof automatically, as if Thor might be heard crossing the heaving skies even now. After a moment Sif turns back to Loki and paints a reassuring smile on her face.

"Nothing. All is well."

"You lie abominably," Loki tells her amusedly.

"So don't keep asking," she retorts curtly. She tugs a heavy woollen cloak about her shoulders and wraps it fully around herself, closing off from him body and mind.

"You worry me, Sif," he tries earnestness now, "Did something happen when you were away?"

"Of course it did," she snaps. "I killed a dozen men, watched three of our own fall, and for what? The village burned before our eyes. Hundreds slaughtered."

For a second he can think of no words to reassure her, taken aback that  _this_ should upset her so. "Not a dozen men, Sif. Trolls. Beasts."

"Do you think it makes a difference to the dead?"

Sif has spent years playing at killing things down here. Why should the reality of actually doing so distress her? He asks her as much, unable to understand it. It isn't as if she's still green, either. More than a year has passed since the day she took her vows.

"Not the reality," she sighs. "The futility. I'd never seen such total defeat, not firsthand. It wasn't even carnage, it was just...fields and farms, all that green, turned to black..."

Loki frowns again, comprehension dawning. Sometimes he forgets that Sif is not entirely of Asgard, and no daughter of Vanaheimr could ever find joy in scorched earth and wasted fruitfulness. "I see. This...Sif, it's naught that should shame you."

"Who said it shames me?" she cuts him off sharply, eyes flashing indignant fire now.

"No one," backtracks Loki with a haste he feels should probably shame  _him._ But he'll always prefer an angry Sif to a sad one, and who in all the nine realms can manipulate her temper like he can? "I merely assumed, since you're hiding down here, that..."

"I am not  _hiding._ " Her feet - bare now, her boots and wool stockings drying at the hearth - skim the flagstones as she crosses the room to put herself before him, the anger evident on her features now. "I do. Not. Hide."

"You would repress this," he returns, reaching up to smooth her sleek, wet hair back behind her ear in a ritual as old as their friendship. Even while she seethes at him, she lets him do it.

"And you know enough of repression to speak authoritatively on this?" Sif pulls away from him to stalk back the way they'd both come in, towards the courtyard and the way out, but before she can even escape the shelter of the porch Loki catches up with her, his own temper prickled by her stubbornness and her pride.

He reaches for her shoulder, anchors her and pushes her back with perhaps unnecessary force until she collides with the stone pillar, a soft grunt fluttering free from her lips.

"Yes. I do. And I would draw that poison from you, Sif, 'ere it becomes too late to do so."

She bites her lip, glares fiercely at him, struggles half-heartedly against the strong hand that holds her pinioned to the column. Her resistance is a pitiful attempt: Loki knows she more than has the match of him in strength yet she remains there, quietly fuming.

"Fine," she hisses at last: "Take it. Get rid of it. Your craft can do it."  _Scrape it from my mind with the edge of a knife if you must, I would not have this weakness with me a moment longer._

"That's not what I meant, and you know it"

"Then what?" Somehow their faces are mere inches apart, her anger misting in the breath between them as Loki traces her cheekbones with his thumbs until her steely ire cracks straight down the middle and she pushes him backwards, out into the pounding rain. With no time to raise a charm, he's soaked within moments.

"Then what, Loki?"

Whether it's the rain dripping steadily down his collar or the fact that his feet landed in a puddle, the prince finds himself out of patience with this game of tempers. Sif notes the change in the air in the split second before he moves and the intensity of his gaze takes her breath away. He is a creature of fire and sorcery, filled with arcane things so beyond her ken she couldn't even name half the tricks he performs on a daily basis. He is antagonism and he is spite, but he knows her, and there are moments when he becomes the focus of her every thought.

They meet each other on the steps in a flurry of swift strides and a rough battle of strong arms and stronger wills, Loki bearing them both back, up and up until once more the sturdy granite of the column meets Sif's hip and he presses her flat against it. Hungrily, furiously she seeks out his starved mouth, claiming it with the heat of her own. He grinds against her, knocking her legs apart with his knee and she moans into his kisses, running her fingers through the thick hair at the nape of his neck.

There's water in her eyes when she opens them so she keeps them shut, finding Loki through touch and taste and falling - no, rather she jumps, feet-first - into a moment of such perfect and inevitable mortality that it seems to move beyond the common transience of existence and become a universe all of its own, never-ending, though it must, it always must.

When it does, when the drumbeat of the rain upon their skin strips clean the conflict from their mirrored forms and Loki's fierce kisses sear the distress from Sif's mind in a more lasting way than some amnesiac enchantment ever could, his hands leave her body before his lips leave her own, rising to cradle her jaw  again.

"Sif..." he murmurs in that way of his, that enflames the deepest core of her. Her eyes open, scorched black with heady need, then close again as she sighs.

"Forgive me." Her voice is low: she is fighting a war for control of herself, and proving better at it than Loki.

She hears his amused response, an exhalation of muted laughter, and opens her eyes again as he bends to kiss her brow gently, then rests his forehead against hers. Twin points of frost and starlight sear into her, so close that she can see her own reflection in their depths. There are words in there, words she might read if she made the attempt. But Loki is all words, blood and bone and cool skin a history of him made flesh, and one day she will have read him cover to cover. One day. All stories have a sequence, though, and Sif has yet to reach the page wherein she might learn the language of his eyes.

"Forgive what?" he murmurs, brushing her lips with his own.  


She learned to read Loki's lips long ago.

* * *

Now, she is a little more adept at the unique tongue of the prince - so much so that she could trace the lines of him blindfold. When the pressing weight of him bears her down upon his bed, when she rolls him over to pin him with her hips and leans in to capture his mouth once more, she is as literate in the silver tongue as anyone might ever hope to be.

Sometimes, she just wishes she were fluent, too.


	2. the flood

They depart with the next sunrise, slipping from the pale shadows of the citadel like twin wights into the royal stables and thence to the dripping darkness of the depths of the kingswood, knowing only the shaded groves a few paces to their left and right as the mist-swathed forest unravels with the encroaching daylight.

They ride in silence. Sif is a little way ahead on her moon-grey mare, stiff-backed and cold to Loki’s mind. Not since she rode away to her vain skirmish so many days ago has she seemed like herself, and he would put this to rights – he does not likes this shadow of his friend, the woman who broods and frowns, whose internal flame is dampened by doubt and defeatism. It’s true she has her reasons and she might wish to spend some time in reflection of them, but Loki would not be Loki if he cared for others’ reasons.

Which is why, not two hours ago, he’d entered her rooms clad for a journey, and instructed Sif to dress and join him in the stables at the first ray of light across the city. He had a venture in mind, he told her; a way to ease her own distress at the battle she’d lost and to get them both away from the war-lovers at court and into a quiet space where he can love war in his own manner.

With her usual combination of curiosity and suspended distrust she’d come without complaint and now she rides before him, gnawing at her lip thoughtfully. He can’t see it, but she knows it’s a habit he finds irritating and childish and so she can’t help a faint sense of gladness that her thick hood protects her from his piercing gaze - as well as the thunderous downpour.

The pair come to the darkest reaches of the royal hunting forest soon after midday and tether their horses to two slender willows that curve around an overhang of craggy rock, draped in thick moss and providing a crude shelter from the worst of the elements. Sif clears some of the ground with a few well-aimed kicks and in silence they pitch themselves a comfortable camp beneath the rock where it meets the sweeping protective arms of an incalculably ancient oak tree. Loki slides into the tent and emerges with his whetstone, and proceeds to sit sharpening his dirk while Sif loosens her bow from her saddlebags and strings it. She’ll fetch them game, she decides, for the evening meal; maybe some grouse, pheasant if she can find it, or perhaps just rabbit to roast, but as her feet bear her away she seems to think better of leaving – she pauses, glances over her shoulder at Loki, and twists fully after a moment’s careful consideration during which something seems to occur to her.

Suddenly she’s moving again, towards him this time, and he looks up in surprise.

Long strides quickly close the distance between the two of them as she reaches out for Loki, a uniquely Siflike determination in her eyes and he reaches out for her too – their hands meet in a tender collision of seeking fingers closing in on one another’s desperate warmth in this cold, wet forest beneath the chalk-white clouds of the saturated skies and the restless susurration of the breeze in the canopy above them.

 _Thank you,_ she says through a swift brushing kiss to the corner of his mouth. _Thank you for bringing me here._

And he, holding her smaller hands in his own and allowing the corner of his mouth to curve up in a faint smile, nods once in a tacit gesture of acknowledgment before he kisses her.

The gifts they give to one another lie in the moments stolen from the world, concealed and exchanged and never mentioned. The unspoken things, the perfect pauses between breaths seized from her sweet lips by his own, between gasps forced from her arching frame as he gives her greater pleasure than she’s ever known. He wants to do it now, he realises, unwilling to surrender her hands. He wants to push her back against the nearest tree and fuck her, out here in the rain, till she screams her frustration to the leaden sky and returns to the Sif he knows. He wants her back but he wants _her_ , pure and simple.

She can see it in his gaze. She knows that if she tries to pull away from him to hunt as she had planned, he’ll only follow. He’ll snatch her back and she’ll see that blazing desire in his gorgeous eyes and she won’t be able to stop herself throwing her arms around him and demanding everything from him. She’s self-centred when it comes to lovemaking; knows what she wants and how to make him give it to her. Fortunately, he gets his own gratification from the reactions he inspires in her.

If she leaves him now, he’ll pull her back. And she’ll let him.

Why bother, she asks herself, leaving in the first place?

Before they left she’d made sure to stow her own tent in her saddle bags. When she checked again, it was gone. Her sleeping roll remained but her tent was nowhere to be found and she had smiled despite herself, and said nothing of it. It’ll be no hardship to share his, though perhaps a tight squeeze.

"Sif…" he breathes, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"I’m here, my love," she responds with a touch of her own lips to his and he drinks in the warmth of her like he might the sweetest wine back at court, even as the silver rainwater slips cold between them and their skin slides slick together and they blink just to keep their vision – just to keep the sight of the other’s eyes in their own. Her hands run over his leather-clad chest and at her touch he surrenders restraint and gives in to the need of her, driving her back and back until they crash together and cling together beneath the rocky outcrop. They played lookouts up there centuries ago, when he was only Loki and she was only fair-haired Sif, lately of Vanaheimr, yet now they have eyes for none but each other and mouths seeking hungrily for a counterpart kiss in the other’s embrace, fingers searching and exposing all to the elements until Loki slips a hand beneath her jerkin and curves his fingers around the flushing skin of her bare hip beneath the slippery leather and she sighs to feel him there so close, so much a part of her. With her sharp teeth she nips at his lower lip, every sensation heightened by the taut frustration that has gripped her this past week and yet seems to dissipate as Loki demands of her every last second of attention, refusing to relinquish his sensory monopoly over her until with a sigh she seems to soften around him and exhale the last of her withheld anger. Anger at Asgard, he thinks, for its own vainglorious worship of the warrior’s way that had given her these expectations and then dashed them, but most of all anger at herself for believing that she could escape defeat.

“I was going hunting,” she breathes into him, every word taken and claimed and swallowed as he takes her lip in a bite of his own and relishes the delicate gasp that escapes her.

He moves to smile against her throat and she can feel the word he murmurs into her skin.

_"Later."_


End file.
